And the women screamed,
Two chess players kept on playing
Their endless game.
In the shade of a leafy tree they stared
At the old chessboard,
And next to each player was a mug of wine,
Solemnly ready
To quench his thirst in the moments when,
Having made his move,
He could sit back and relax, waiting
On his opponent.
Houses were burning, walls were torn down
And coffers plundered;
Women were raped and propped against
The crumbling walls;
Children, pierced by spears, were so much
Blood in the streets . . .
But the two chess players stayed where they were,
Close to the city
And far from its clamor, and kept on playing
Their game of chess.
Even if, in the bleak wind’s messages,
They heard the screams
And, upon reflection, knew in their hearts
That surely their women
And their tender daughters were being raped
In the nearby distance,
Even if, in the moment they thought this,
A fleeting shadow
Passed over their hazy, oblivious brows,
Soon their calm eyes
Returned with confident attention
To the old chessboard.
When the ivory king’s in danger, who cares
About the flesh and blood
Of sisters and mothers and little children?
When the rook can’t cover
The retreat of the white queen, what
Does pillaging matter?
And when with sure hand the opponent’s king
Is placed in check,
It hardly concerns one’s soul that children
Are dying in the distance.
Even if the infuriated face
Of an invading warrior
Should suddenly peer over the wall and cause
The solemn chess player
To fall right there in a bloody heap,
The moment before that
Was still devoted to the favorite game
Of the supremely indifferent.
Let cities fall and people suffer,
Let life and freedom
Perish, let secure, ancestral properties
Be burned and uprooted,
But when war interrupts the game, make sure
The king’s not in check
And the most advanced of the ivory pawns
Is ready to redeem the rook.
My brothers in loving Epicurus
And in understanding him
More in accord with our view than with his,
Let’s learn from the story
Of the impassive chess players how
To spend our lives.
Let serious things scarcely matter to us
And grave things weigh little,
And let the natural drive of instincts yield
To the futile pleasure
(In the peaceful shade of the trees)
Of playing a good game.
Whatever we take from this useless life,
Be it glory or fame,
Love, science, or life itself,
It’s worth no more
Than the memory of a well-played game
And a match won
Against a better player.
Glory weighs like an overlarge burden
And fame like a fever,
Love wearies, for it ardently searches,
Science never finds,
And life grieves, for it knows it is passing . . .
The game of chess
Completely absorbs one’s heart but weighs little
When lost, for it’s nothing.
Ah, in the shade that unconsciously loves us
And with a mug of wine
At our side, intent only on the useless
Effort of the chess game,
Even if the game is only a dream
And we have no partner,
Let’s do as the Persians of this story:
Wherever out there,
Near or faraway, war and our country
And life are calling us,
Let them call in vain, while we dream
In the friendly shade
Of our partners, and the chess game dreams
Of its indifference.
1 JUNE 1916
Not you, Christ, do I hate or reject.
In you as in the other, older gods I believe.
But for me you are not more
Or less than they, just younger.
I do hate and calmly abhor those who want
To place you above the other gods, your equals.
I want you where you are, not higher
Nor lower than they—just yourself.
A sad god, perhaps necessary since there was none
Like you, now yet another in the Pantheon
And our faith, no higher or purer,
Since for all things there were gods, except you.
Take care, exclusive idolater of Christ, for life
Is multiple, all days differ from all others,
And only if we’re multiple like them
Will we be with the truth, and alone.
9 OCTOBER 1916
I suffer, Lydia, from the fear of destiny.
Any tiny thing that might
Give rise to a new order in my life
Frightens me, Lydia.
Anything whatsoever that changes
The smooth course of my existence,
Though it change it for something better,
Because it means change,
I hate and don’t want. May the gods
Allow my life to be a continuous,
Perfectly flat plain, running
To where it ends.
Though I never taste glory and never
Receive love or due respect from others,
It will suffice that life be only life
And that I live it.
26 MAY 1917
A verse repeating
A cool breeze,
Summer in the fields,
And the soul’s courtyard
Vacant and sunlit . . .
Or, in winter, the snowy
Summits in the distance,
The fireside where we sit
Singing tales handed down,
And a poem to tell all this . . .
The gods grant
Few pleasures beyond
These, which are nothing.
But they also grant
That we want no others.
21 JANUARY 1921
Securely I sit on the steadfast column
Of the verses in which I’ll remain,
Not fearing the endless future influx
Of times and of oblivion,
For when the mind intently studies
In itself the world’s reflections,
It becomes their plasma, and the world is what
Creates art, not the mind. Thus
On the plaque the outer moment engraves
Its being, and there endures.
[JANUARY 1921]
You’ll become only who you always were.
What the gods give they give at the start.
Only once does Fate give you
Your fate, for you’re but one.
Little is attained by the effort you exert
In accord with your native ability.
Little, if you were not
Conceived for more.
Be glad to be who you cannot resist
Being. You will still have the vast
Sky to cover you, and the earth,
Green or dry, given the season.
12 MAY 1921
Each man fulfills the destiny he must fulfill
And desires the destiny he desires;
He neither fulfills what he desires
Nor desires what he fulfills.
Like stones that border flower beds
We are arranged by Fate, and there remain,
Our lot having placed us
Where we had to be placed.
Let’s have no better knowledge of what
Was our due than that it was our due.
Let’s fulfill what we are.
Nothing more are we given.
29 JULY 1923
I don’t sing of night, since in my song
The sun I sing of will end in night.
I’m aware of all I forget.
I sing to forget it.
Could I only stop, even if in a dream,
The course of Apollo and know myself,
Even if mad, as the twin
Of an imperishable hour!
2 SEPTEMBER 1923
I don’t want the presents which,
Contrary to your intention, are
The very denial of what you give.
You give me what I’ll lose,
Weeping its loss twice over,
As something of you and of me.
Promise it instead, without giving
Me anything, since then the loss
Will occur in my hopes
More than in my memory.
My only displeasure will be
The continual one of living,
Since the days pass and what’s hoped for
Still doesn’t come, and it’s nothing.
2 SEPTEMBER 1923
I want the flower you are, not the one you give.
Why refuse me what I don’t ask of you?
You’ll have time to refuse
After you’ve given.
Flower, be a flower to me! If, ungenerous, you’re plucked
By the hand of the ill-omened sphinx, you’ll wander forever
As an absurd shadow,
Seeking what you never gave.
21 OCTOBER 1923
Ad Caeiri manes magistri1
The new summer that newly brings
Apparently new flowers renews
The ancient green
Of the revived leaves.
No more will the barren abyss, which silently
Swallows what we hardly are, give back
To the clear light of day
His living presence.
No more; and the progeny to whom his thought
Gave the life of reason, pleads for him in vain,
For the Styx’s nine keys
Lock but do not open.
He who was like a god among singers,
Who heard the voices that called from Olympus
And, hearing, listened
And understood, is now nothing.
But weave for him still the garlands you weave.
Whom will you crown if you don’t crown him?
Present them as funerary
Offerings with no cult.
But let not the loam or Hades touch
His fame; and you, whom Ulysses founded,
You, with your seven hills,
Take maternal pride,
Equal, since him, to the seven cities
Claiming Homer, to alcaic Lesbos,
Seven-gated Thebes,
And Ogygia, mother of Pindar.
22 OCTOBER 1923
How short a time is the longest life
And our youth in it! Ah Chloe, Chloe,
If I don’t love, don’t drink
And don’t instinctively not think,
The unmovable law weighs on me,
Time’s endless, imposed hours afflict me,
And to my ears comes
The sound of the rushes
On the hidden shore where the cold lilies
Of the nether fields grow and the current
Knows not where the day is,
A groaning murmur.
24 OCTOBER 1923
Now plowing his scant field, now solemnly
Beholding it as if he were beholding
A son, this man enjoys, uncertainly,
The unreflected life.
Changes occurring in the false borders
Do not thwart his plow, nor is he
Troubled by whatever councils govern
The fate of patient peoples.
Little more in the present of the future
Than the grass he pulled up, he lives securely
His old life that won’t return but endures,
Sons, different and his own.
16 NOVEMBER 1923
Don’t try to build in the space you suppose
Is future, Lydia, and don’t promise yourself
Tomorrow. Quit hoping and be who you are
Today. You alone are your life.
Don’t plot your destiny, for you are not future.
Between the cup you empty and the same cup
Refilled, who knows whether your fortune
Won’t interpose the abyss?
[1923?]
Hour by hour the ancient face of repeated
Beings changes, and hour by hour,
Thinking, we get older.
Everything passes, unknown, and the knower
Who remains knows he knows not. But nothing,
Aware or unaware, returns.
Equals, therefore, of what isn’t our equal,
Let us preserve, in the heat we remember,
The flame of the spent hour.
16 NOVEMBER 1923
Already over my vain brow
The hair of that youth who died is graying.
My eyes shine less today.
My lips have lost their right to kisses.
If you still love me, for love’s sake stop loving:
Don’t cheat on me with me.
13 JUNE 1926
The leaf won’t return to the branch it left
Nor form a new leaf with the same stem.
The moment, which ends as this one begins,
Has died forever.
The vain and uncertain future promises
No more than this repeated experience
Of the mortal lot and the lost condition
Of things and of myself.
And so, in this universal river
Where I’m not a wave, but waves,
I languidly flow, with no requests
And no gods to hear them.
28 SEPTEMBER 1926
Fruits are given by trees that live,
Not by the wishful mind, which adorns
Itself with ashen flowers
From the abyss within.
How many kingdoms in minds and in things
Your imagination has carved! That many
You’ve lost, pre-dethroned,
Without ever having them.
Against great opposition you cannot
Create more than doomed intentions!
Abdicate and be
King of yourself.
6 JUNE 1926
Dreamed pleasure is pleasure, albeit in a dream.
What we suppose of ourselves we become,
If with a focused mind
We persist in believing it.
So do not censure my way of thinking
About things, beings, and fate.
For myself I create as much
As I create for myself.
Outside me, indifferent to what I think,
Fate is fulfilled. But I fulfill myself
Within the small ambit
Of what is given to me as mine.
30 JANUARY 1927
To nothing can your hands, now things, appeal,
Nor can your now stiff lips persuade,
In the oppressive depths
Of damp, inflicted earth.
Perhaps just the smile from when you loved
Embalms you, far away, and in our memories
Lifts you to what you were,
Today a rotten hive.
And the useless name that your dead body
&nbs
p; Used, like a soul, when alive on earth
Is forgotten. This ode engraves
An anonymous smile.
MAY 1927
How many enjoy the enjoyment of enjoying
Without enjoying their enjoyment, and divide it
Between themselves and others
Taking note of their enjoyment.
Ah, Lydia, forego the trappings of enjoyment,
For we have but one enjoyment; we cannot
Give it to others as a prize
For noticing that we enjoy.
Each of us is only our self, and to enjoy
With others is to enjoy them, not enjoy for them.
Learn what your body,
Your boundary, teaches you.
9 OCTOBER 1927
Sleep is good because we wake up from it
And know that it’s good. If death is sleep,
We’ll wake up from it;
If it isn’t, and we won’t,
Then let’s reject it with all that we are
For as long as the jailer’s indefinite
Respite allows
Our condemned bodies.
Lydia, I prefer the vilest life
To death, which I don’t know, and for you
I pick flowers, votive
Offerings of a small destiny.
19 NOVEMBER 1927
The fleeting track made by the vanished foot
In the soft grass, the echo that hollowly rolls,
The shadow that grows blacker,
The whiteness a ship leaves in its wake—
So too the soul, no greater or better, quits souls;
What’s passed leaves what’s passing. Memory forgets.
Once dead, we keep dying.
Lydia, we exist for ourselves.
25 JANUARY 1928
Whatever ceases is death, and the death
Is ours if it ceases for us. A bush
Withers, and with it
Goes part of my life.
In all I’ve observed, part of me remained.
Whatever I’ve seen, when it passed I passed,
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe Page 9